The Master and Margarita. #0 The stranger

Ooook, the first picture just finished, congrats to me and the customer.

#0, The stranger (the Fool in classic tarot) - Woland arrives to Moscow

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...the man described did not limp on any leg, and was neither short nor enormous, but simply tall. As for his teeth, he had platinum
crowns on the left side and gold on the right. He was wearing an expensive grey suit and imported shoes of a matching colour. His grey beret
was cocked rakishly over one ear; under his arm he carried a stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle’s head. 13 He looked to be a little over
forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black, left - for some reason - green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than
the other. In short, a foreigner.

Having passed by the bench on which the editor and the poet were placed, the foreigner gave them a sidelong look, stopped, and suddenly
sat down on the next bench, two steps away from the friends.

‘A German...’ thought Berlioz.

‘An Englishman...’ thought Homeless. ‘My, he must be hot in those gloves.’

And the foreigner gazed around at the tall buildings that rectangularly framed the pond, making it obvious that he was seeing the place
for the first time and that it interested him. He rested his glance on the upper floors, where the glass dazzlingly reflected the broken-up sun which
was for ever departing from Mikhail Alexandrovich, then shifted it lower down to where the windows were beginning to darken before evening,
smiled condescendingly at something, narrowed his eves, put his hands on the knob and his chin on his hands.

‘For instance, Ivan,’ Berlioz was saying, ‘you portrayed the birth of Jesus, the son of God, very well and satirically, but the gist of it is that a
whole series of sons of God were born before Jesus, like, say, the Phoenician Adonis, the Phrygian Atris, the Persian Mithras. And, to put
it briefly, not one of them was born or ever existed, Jesus included, and what’s necessary is that, instead of portraying his birth or, suppose, the
coming of the Magi, 18 you portray the absurd rumours of their coming. Otherwise it follows from your story that he really was born!...’

Here Homeless made an attempt to stop his painful hiccupping by holding his breath, which caused him to hiccup more painfully and loudly,
and at that same moment Berlioz interrupted his speech, because the foreigner suddenly got up and walked towards the writers. They looked at
him in surprise.

‘Excuse me, please,’ the approaching man began speaking, with a foreign accent but without distorting the words, ‘if, not being your acquaintance,
I allow myself... but the subject of your learned conversation is so interesting that...’

Here he politely took off his beret and the friends had nothing left but to stand up and make their bows.
‘No, rather a Frenchman ....’ thought Berlioz.

‘A Pole? ...’ thought Homeless.

It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him - that is, not liked
but ... how to put it ... was interested, or whatever.